Latest Drawing: Prairie Wind

 I shouldn’t feel bad that I enjoy the singer/songwriters of the past so SO much more than today’s “entertainers”…Bob Dylan, Joni Mitchell, John Lennon, and this piece of work shown here, Neil Young, singer, songwriter, activist.

About a decade ago, Neil Young suffered from a brain aneurysm and that same year he released an album entitled “Prairie Wind”. I created a more primitive version of the picture below, but not thinking, I suppose, I named it “Prairie Wind” not realizing it was the title of his 2005 album. Of course, there may also be a hotel name in the Midwest with this title. If you look up the album cover, it resembles a novel by Willa Cather.

Being a fan of the “Little House” series featuring the famous Melissa Gilbert and Michael Landon, I s’ppose that I really get a kick out of art that features the bucolic side of a simpler age. I ended up recreating my work, this time with more detail. My stumbling block was drawing the windmill: not that I had difficulty, but because deep down, I don’t like the look of American windmills. 

They somehow resemble a cell phone tower in that they are unaesthetic and perfunctory looking. Nothing like European windmills; but since this was a flatland prairie scene out of the American Midwest, I had to stick with an American windmill, elegant or not.

Graphic Work I Did Inspired by a Multimedia Artist

 And the multimedia artist in question is Sandy Skoglund. Just who exactly is this?

The world around me can be such a bleak place, but the world of Sandy Skoglund: surreal, bizarre, and fascinating, is a place I wish I could dwell in. For those of you who don’t know who I am talking about, she was the mastermind behind Revenge of the Goldfish and Radioactive Cats. What you might have seen in a museum or magazine was probably a cibachrome print, but where it all started was from a lifesize tableau involving mannequins, real people, the semblance of three walled props, and inanimate objects, food, or plaster creatures.

These setups can take months to assemble; so I would imagine that Ms Skoglund has a crackerjack team at her side through it all. Wouldn’t that be the dream job-assembling the intricacies of art through Cheez doodles, raisins, jellybeans and even less enjoyable to touch food items like bacon and raw ground beef? Then the fully formed setups are painstakingly photographed. Yes, they are life sized, not scaled down replicas or anything. I did plenty of research to find that out. “The Cocktail Party” and “Raining Popcorn” are not “dioramas”. They are surreal and true to life.

“Good artists copy, Great artists steal” – Pablo Picasso

I have a funny thing to confess: I have actually made my own duplicates of her famous works, but keeping within the standards of respect, I signed the pictures with my own name and “After Sandy Skoglund” Imitation may be the most sincere form of flattery, but plagiarism is not a joke. I do not own the copyrights to any of her work; which is why I am not showing it here willy-nilly. You can do some research on the net and find plenty of sites featuring her work. I have been inspired by her work to the point that it led to some creative work that I eked out “So Many Shoes, So Little Time” “Flower Power” and “The Gamer” are my own original concepts.

What inspired what for me?

My work was inspired by “Hangers” “Accessories” & “Spoons”

Oh, Ms Skoglund does not just design and create eerily colorful full-scale scenes. She is also a graphic artist. Her series, entitled “True Fiction, Two” I can tell, was made with photo manipulation programs. Currently she has the work in progress “Winter” going on. It involves the drawing of familiar faces on the computer using a Wacom tablet; these drawings are adhered to fired and glazed ceramic snowflakes. I have a Wacom tablet; that thing takes some getting used to. I cannot confess that I use it much; there is a steeper learning curve involved.

But the best thing about the work of Ms. Skoglund, is the intricate “busyness” of it: Even now when I study her work online,I catch sight of details I hadn’t noticed before. The word “rich tapestry” comes to mind. Even now, in the work “The Invisible Web” there are actually bent up forks coming out of that purple car. I actually thought it was shredded paper. And the work “Breathing Glass” when you look at a high-res close-up…many many tiny dragonflies and mosaic glass. And “Shimmering Madness”…butterflies and jellybeans. Zany for the sake of zany, yet masterfully planned out and executed.

Sandy Skoglund is also a filmmaker, multimedia artist and photographer. I got to have the pleasure of hearing her conduct a lecture at a prestigious New England college on YouTube. Her viewpoints on the consumerist culture in America today that influenced the repetitive object theme that is her signature art trademark-only validates the awe that turned me into a fan and admirer.

How I Created My Skoglund-esque Images Above:

Program: Corel Draw X5 Tools: Shape Tool, Freehand, Pen Tool, Gradient Fill, Paint Bucket, Clone Tool, Text Tool (To sign my name and date) on a letter-sized background 11 by 8.5, 300 dpi, high resolution. Time needed: About 3 hours.

And yes….I did try to craft my own version of “Radioactive Cats” and “As Far as the Eye Can See”. Even saving one of Ms Skoglund’s images as a desktop image has its drawbacks since I usually need a pretty darn large size for it to look really good. I did the next best thing….I used her concepts as jump-off points, I did not try to make a bad imitation of them all. Thank you, Ms. Skoglund, for your magical inspiration.

Create a Simple Vector Object in Corel Draw

 In this post I have a special treat for readers today . A lesson in which I will show you how I draw simple vector objects…the following “blueprint” can be used for the foundation of most all small objects.If you’d like to follow along you can also use the free open platform program Inkscape if you don’t have access to Corel Draw. I include helpful screenshots so you don’t get lost along the way. OK, ready?

Step 1: Whichever program you are using, create a new document-no need to get too particular about the size, but go with at least one bigger than 600 pixels to allow for margin of error.

From your Toolbox, you’ll want to grab the Rectangle Tool, and draw a square shape. There is an “x” and “y” coordinates box somewhere near the top of the page that will provide measurements of your objects. Obviously we all know what a square looks like but if you’re a stickler for precision the coordinate figures will tell you – say for example, both x and y read “0.25” well then you’ve got yourself a perfectly square box.

Step 2: Go back to the Toolbox and look for the Fill tool – it resembles a paintcan. Choose a yellow shade.

Step 3: When you look at the basic shapes what you see is not limited to those….you can always modify the different shapes. At the top of the toolbar is an option to “round off” the corners…I chose “0.5” to give the corners a nice appearance.

Step 4: Drawing the face – Go to the “Ellipse” tool in your toolbox and select it….Now draw 2 small oval shapes; these will represent the eyes. Repeat step 2 to make them black in appearance. Lastly…draw 2 more oval shapes, this time much smaller…these will represent the eye highlights. Give them a white fill.

Step 5: When you are still in Ellipse mode; you should see another alternative option at the top of your toolbar which resembles a “pie” shape. There’s another one like it nearby that resembles an open semicircle…It is called the “Arc” – select it. Using it draw a semicircle shape which will represent the smiley mouth.

Step 6: I used the “Freehand” drawing tool for this one (it’s underneath the Pen tool) and drew a little embellishments for the smile mouth corners.

Step 7: Sometimes you don’t want your drawings to have a “flat” appearance – to prevent this I use the Gradient Tool regularly. It should be under the Interactive Fill tool. Give your yellow square a little depth by adding a gradient fill of white/yellow. White in its most perfect form is #FFFFFF but if you are in the neighborhood of cream or ivory don’t sweat it; it will still look good.

Step 8: I really dislike hard outlines around my drawings – I always go with the “Hairline Outline” option in the Outline tool. Sometimes “No Outline” is fine, too. There are other options for subtlety in tenths. Choose Hairline outline for the outside of the square as the program tends to default to 1.0 or in that neighborhood.

Step 9: This is the fun and easy way to add highlights to your images. Grab the Rectangle Tool again from step 1 and make a little bitty rectangle; then choose “Clone” and replicate it. Then repeat the step with a slightly smaller rectangle- the key is to make a little bitty “window”. Select all 4 of these and “Group” them together then give them a white fill. Last but not least choose the Transparency Tool and go with around 40-50% – the little “window” will look partially transparent. Move it on to the corner of your smiley guy. (Be sure you’ve chosen “No Outline” for the grouped window shape – subtle, subtle, subtle with highlights.)

Step 10: Add the words “Smile” using the Text tool using the font and color of your choice. For this I went with “Ravie”..I LOVE its appearance; it has that mod 60s/70s look to it.

All right…you have just completed a simple vector drawing!! Wasn’t that fun? If/when you are drawing other objects in the future remember that the tools and step I have provided will still apply regardless of the type of object.

My Tooya Pro Tablet Review

 This turned out to be one of those “happy accidents” that ended up in my repertoire. My husband was always a fan of the Wacom tablet-he pronounces it “whack ’em” I guess that’s the correct pronunciation  At some point he had misplaced his Wacom tablet and ended up purchasing the Tooya Pro tablet back in 2012-I think he wanted to incorporate it into gamer graphics (his favorite niche) plus it also featured the Photoshop bonus. 

But guess who ended up doing the lion’s share of use -Yep, yours truly! Let’s face it, if you are going to go for professional looking work, your mouse can only take you so far. Non-geometric, amorphous, and unique shapes that make up vector illustration need to be handled with precision!

Tooya Pro Graphics Tablet Review: Features and Benefits

As I said previously the Tooya Pro tablet also included a Photoshop Elements 7.0 “extra”. (It’s great for beginners to image manipulation work; like a “Photoshop Lite” version.) It also comes with an ergonomically designed stylus pen.

• Drawing area is 10″ (across) by 6.25″ (long). Great for working under a wide screen monitor with no aspect ratio issues.
• Workspace pad is 5 mm thick, so it’s very streamlined.
• Mac and Windows compatibility; specifically versions XP/Vista/7, Intel based, 10.4 and later.
• 1024 Levels of pressure sensitivity

Can also be used in conjunction with Microsoft Office programs for day-to-day writing tasks(Word,Excel, Outlook, and Power Point)

Tooya Pro Tablet Pros and Cons

Although I usually use mine for mock-ups and drawings that require fine-tuned detail, the Tooya Pro tablet also has office task functionality to boot. Since it pretty much replaces the standard mouse as the point of control, it can be used for freehand writing with aplomb. The pad is USB port operative; a blue LED light tells you it’s in operation mode. The stylus rests in a base and has a built-in “sleep mode” it goes into after 3 minutes of idleness. The stylus requires 1 triple “A” battery -that’s the “really little” not the “little” ones LOL. I always use rechargeable Ni-Mh batteries.

Like all software, tools and accessories out there, the Tooya pro tablet is not without its drawbacks and one of these may be system compatibility. I would not recommend it to users of Windows 8 and beyond and Linux users. If this is the case you may want to consider seeking a digital art tablet released a little later. As I understand Windows 8 is not that popular right now and may even be on its way out. The company that spearheaded the Tooya- PenPower, speaks of installing a driver for a differing Windows version which is a topic for another post 😊.

It’s almost a total plug and play operation, but you will need to install the program that enables the user, you-to modify the settings, including pen tip pressure-a very important thing to understand as I remember when I was first trying to master the stylus on my own.

The Tooya Pro tablet integrates easily with all the Adobe programs including the Flash products as well as the one I use the most, Corel Draw. The biggest thing I had to work on was mastery of the stylus and not hitting (accidentally) those little buttons on the side which function as mouse-click buttons. but I finally realized that’s why I had sub-menus dancing around I didn’t attempt. All I have to do is lightly tap a tool from the side panel that I need to use and boom, I can go from the Shape Tool to the Bezier on a dime. The pen tips are also replaceable, 2-3 extras are also included.

I observed that some people compared the Tooya Pro tablet to the Wacom (and a few others) – I try to be objective here having not used the latter before. Speaking of which – we later on recovered my husband’s beloved Wacom. Unfortunately, the stylus is missing. Wow, talk about a dilly of a pickle! Wonder if it will ever turn up, or if a replacement spare could be obtained? (I’d love to take this one for a test-drive and compare it.)

Conclusion

So if you’re serious about graphic art, you need a digital art tablet that’s gonna work as hard as you do,and provide reliable performance. Not just for freehand, but they’re great for tracing on photographs or other pictures you may be trying to replicate. I do this in conjunction with the grid layout on my program so I can be sure I’m getting proportions and perspectives down to the letter.

But there you have it, in terms of the best affordable drawing tablets, I’m pretty much sold on my Tooya Pro!

Who Needs a Graphic Artist When I Can DIY

 Image is everything if you’re a marketer! Think about it… how many times have you passed judgment on a company based on the quality, or lack thereof, of the junk mail that you have been sent? You’re not the only one.. Businesses cannot afford to go “slumming it” in their marketing. If you knew that most of your mail goes straight into the recycle bin, it might grieve you to spend four times the amount, just for it to end up later discarded.

Look at it this way… every communication you send is an advertisement for your business. You and your team have a marketing budget. Think of the design of your logo and company stationery as a form of marketing, as an investment in the future of your company.

It is possible to design a logo yourself using free or very low cost software (for example; GIMP comes to mind-which is fine for practice work) you can even design a logo online, but the results may be immediately and obviously substandard A company website must be immediately identifiable with the company logo, colors and other graphic elements.         

It is far more advantageous to pay the fee and have a professional job done. Your company image is a central part of your marketing and if the company logo and image are inconsistent or amateurish, who is going to buy from you? Would you buy from a group that had a logo that you recognized had been done using customary graphic fonts such as Wingdings?

A competent graphic artist will design a logo from scratch, using leading edge software that can achieve color blends not reachable using lower specification software. Your artist will incorporate your logo into a unique set of company graphics that will come to be related with your company over time.

How do you locate a graphic artist? Ask friends and fellow businesspeople whom they went to. Searching online is another way. Elance is an excellent place to start looking for a graphic artist. You can invite bids for your work and negotiate with the graphic artist of your choice.

example of graphic designYou should always ask to see examples of previous work. The company should be able to give you options from work they have completed. Be wary about negotiating prices before you see any results. Specify the format that the work should be given to you in. You need to have software that will open the files, so you can make a few amendments in ten years’ time.